Youth culture educational reform and pedagogy

The discourse of globalisation and the knowledge economy are now front and centre of the ever changing discourse of youth and youth identity. Educational reform in Malaysian society is seeking to engage the problems of globalization and the need for reform in schooling as a prerequisite for social and economic development. The education of youth is as a critical prerequisite for national advancement and development. The syllogism that structures debate with respect to globalization, youth and education is that reform to teaching technique will lead to improved competencies in students and this in turn will lead to improvements in human capital thus leading to economic and social advancement. Missing from such a simple approach is an understanding of youth culture in its multiple forms as now being productive of capacities, knowledge’s and attitudes that are arguably often far in advance of what is taught in schools. This argues that often the action in terms of cognitive growth, glocalised competencies, collaboration, cross cultural dialogue and innovative creativity are found in youth cyber communities, popular cultural movements often portrayed as problematic or troublesome. Proper educational strategies in Malaysian schooling society require teachers to learn from their students and engage innovative pedagogy not as something to be taught top down in rote fashion, but as something that is genuinely open, interactive and dialogical. This paper will discuss this theoretical issue with specific reference to Malaysian examples and policy initiatives.

Obesity prevention in children and adolescents

Childhood and adolescent obesity has been increasing in most middle- and high-income countries, and, as with adult obesity, this has been driven by increasingly obesogenic environments, especially the food environment. This constitutes a “market failure,” signaling the need for government interventions with policies, programs, and social marketing. Population prevention strategies are critical, and children and adolescents should be the priority populations. Food marketing to children is a central policy issue for governments to address, and comprehensive regulations are needed to provide substantive protection for children. Community-based intervention programs show some real promise in reducing childhood obesity, but the 2 big challenges ahead are to ensure that there is substantial ongoing funding so that the community capacity to promote healthy weights can be scaled up to a national level and to ensure that policies are in place to support these efforts. The social and cultural shifts that support healthy eating and physical activity occur differentially, and special efforts are needed to reduce the socioeconomic gradients associated with childhood obesity. A positive public health approach encompassing environmental, regulatory, sociocultural, and educational strategies offer the best chance of reducing obesity without increasing disordered eating patterns.

Payoff, capital and teachers : education policies of the 90s

Although education remains in the flux of change, reviewing the trends in educational reforms in the last decade provides opportunity to learn from the past with a view to improving the educational strategies guiding reforms in the future. As globalisation has become more consolidated in education policy, investigating how particular ideas about globalisation inhabited policy and established over time, presents ways of addressing and challenging the assumptions about education and globalization in the 90s and the fall out from these ideas. Using evidence based policy research, this paper explores how educational policies from OECD, UNESCO and the World Bank coalesced with certain notions of globalisation that strategically guided educational reforms. An analysis of education-globalisation nexus in the policies of OECD, UNESCO and the World Bank evidences the distinct character and agenda of each agency. By focusing on textual evidence, in a range of education policy from the 90s, the paper discusses how policy consolidated particular ideas about globalization and presented ‘simple’ recipes for educational change. When reviewing the 90s, the relationship between education and global change shows that OECD policy emphasized education as a social and individual payoff, World Bank policy focused on education creating certainty enabling the free flow of capital, and UNESCO policy problematised globalization and focused on the importance of teachers as a way to create stability in education during the paradoxical times.

A new child protection strategy for Aboriginal communities in Western Australia

Despite numerous government inquiries and reforms, child sexual abuse in remote Aboriginal communities is a well-documented, ongoing problem. Established in Western Australia in 2009, Operation RESET is a multi-agency proactive community engagement initiative designed to improve the ability of communities and supporting agencies to detect, respond to and prevent child sexual abuse through the implementation of community engagement, capacity building and educational strategies. This comment describes the three core principles of Operation RESET: tackling child sexual abuse requires a collaborative, proactive approach between government and communities; the underlying causes and context of child sexual abuse must be recognised; and children's overall safety and wellbeing must be enhanced through integrated services that strengthen and empower families and communities. It also enumerates the seven phases of the operation's implementation, from identifying target communities to deploying an exit strategy. The comment ends by addressing the importance of empirical evaluation.

Satisfaction of newly graduated nurses enrolled in transition-to-practice programmes in their first year of employment: a systematic review

To investigate job satisfaction and confidence levels of graduate nurses during their first year of employment and the impact various training programmes have on these factors.

Patient deterioration education: Evaluation of face-to-face simulation and e-simulation approaches

Background: Simulation-based education is one strategy that may be used to teach nursing students to recognize and manage patient deterioration. Method: Final-year preregistration nursing students (n=97) completed three face-to-face laboratory-based team simulations with a simulated patient (actor) and 330 students individually completed a three-scenario Web-based simulation program: FIRST2ACTWeb™. Results: Both groups achieved moderate performance scores (means: face to face, 49%; e-simulation, 69%). Course evaluations were positive, skill gain showing a greater effect size in the face-to-face program than for e-simulation, and higher satisfaction and more positive appraisal. Conclusion: Face-to-face simulation and e-simulation are effective educational strategies with e-simulation offering greater feasibility. Either strategy is likely to add value to the learning experience.

Examining the preparation and ongoing support of adults to take their medications as prescribed in kidney transplantation.

RATIONALE, AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: The shortage of kidney donors and benefits of kidney transplantation make graft success imperative. Medication adherence is critical to prevent the risk of graft rejection. This paper examines how adults are prepared and supported by renal transplant co-ordinators and pharmacists to take their medications as prescribed in kidney transplantation. METHODS: Renal transplant co-ordinators and pharmacists of all five hospitals offering adult kidney transplantation in Victoria, Australia, were interviewed between November 2013 and February 2014. All data underwent qualitative descriptive analysis. RESULTS: Nine renal transplant co-ordinators and six pharmacists were interviewed. Although there was no standardized approach to education or other evidence-based strategies to facilitate medication adherence, there were similarities between sites. These similarities included printed information, pre-transplant education sessions, the use of medication lists and medication administration aids, intensive education in hospital and ensuring an adequate supply of medications post-discharge. CONCLUSIONS: Renal transplant co-ordinators and pharmacists recognized the importance of early patient education concerning immunosuppressant medication. However, each site had developed their own way of preparing a patient for kidney transplantation and follow-up in the acute hospital setting based on experience and practice. Other non-educational strategies involving behavioural and emotional aspects were less common. Differences in usual care reinforce the necessity for evidence-based health care for best patient outcomes.

Displacement and health

The health needs of displaced populations vary widely. The question as to the demands displaced populations place on health care resources and health care providers in their destination countries or regions remains the subject of great debate and contention. Internationally, health care workers are faced with complex challenges in providing care to displaced populations. This paper highlights some of the key health issues for displaced populations around the globe. Whilst 'Band Aid' solutions to existing health problems are useful in the short term, the paper describes the need for long-term public health prevention and educational strategies to enable displaced communities full access to and participation in their new 'home' communities.

Is there a Plan B?: Clinical educators supporting underperforming students in practice settings

The relationship between supervisors and students in work-based clinical settings is complex, but critical to the appropriate development of the learner. This study investigated the experiences of physiotherapy clinical educators of working with underperforming students, and specifically explored educational strategies used with this subgroup of learners. Findings indicated the cyclical relationship between clinical educator's stressful experiences of working in multifaceted roles within a clinical environment and their tendencies to provide 'more more more' - more of the same strategies, more feedback and supervision, and more of themselves - as their primary approach to supporting underperforming students. The data suggest that clinical educators did not have an alternative ('Plan B') if the 'more more more' approach did not produce results. We argue that the problem of managing underperforming students is a complex one without easy solutions but a focus on systems changes rather than upon individual students or clinical educators should be considered.

An evaluation of the effect of an educational intervention for Australian social workers on competence in delivering brief cognitive behavioural strategies : a randomised controlled trial

Background Broad community access to high quality evidence-based primary mental health care is an ongoing challenge around the world. In Australia one approach has been to broaden access to care by funding psychologists and other allied health care professionals to deliver brief psychological treatments to general practitioners' patients. To date, there has been a scarcity of studies assessing the efficacy of social worker delivered psychological strategies. This study aims to build the evidence base by evaluating the impact of a brief educational intervention on social workers' competence in delivering cognitive behavioural strategies (strategies derived from cognitive behavioural therapy). Methods A randomised controlled trial design was undertaken with baseline and one-week follow-up measurement of both objective and self-perceived competence. Simulated consultations with standardised depressed patients were recorded on videotape and objective competence was assessed by blinded reviewers using the Cognitive Therapy Scale. Questionnaires completed by participants were used to measure self-perceived competence. The training intervention was a 15 hour face-to-face course involving presentations, video example consultations, written materials and rehearsal of skills in pairs. Results 40 Melbourne-based (Australia) social workers enrolled and were randomised and 9 of these withdrew from the study before the pre training simulated consultation. 30 of the remaining 31 social workers (97%) completed all phases of the intervention and evaluation protocol (16 from intervention and 14 from control group). The intervention group showed significantly greater improvements than the control group in objective competence (mean improvement of 14.2 (7.38-21.02) on the 66 point Cognitive Therapy Scale) and in subjective confidence (mean improvement of 1.28 (0.84-1.72) on a 5 point Likert scale). On average, the intervention group improved from below to above the base competency threshold on the Cognitive Therapy Scale whilst the control group remained below. Conclusions Social workers can attain significant improvements in competency in delivering cognitive behavioural strategies from undertaking brief face to face training. This is relevant in the context of health reforms that involve social worker delivery of evidence based psychological care. Further research is required to assess how these improvements in competence translate into performance in practice and clinical outcomes for patients.

Fictions for representing and generating semiotic consciousness: the crime story and educational inquiry

This essay appraises the work of fiction in representing and generating semiotic consciousness in education by examining three intertextual continuities between crime fiction and stories of educational inquiry. First, many reports of educational research resemble detective stories in their quests to determine the (or a) “truth” about something that is problematic or puzzling and this essay describes some of the ways in which the characteristic investigatory methods of fictional detectives resemble forms of educational inquiry. Second, the characteristic ways in which detective stories generate interpretations are compared with the textual strategies deployed in producing meanings and narratives in educational inquiry. Third, recent transformations of both detective fiction and educational inquiry are shown to be comparable — and intertextually linked — manifestations of cultural and semiotic shifts associated with postmodernity. I conclude by suggesting that authors of “anti-detective” crime fiction might provide more appropriate models of educational inquiry than do fictional detectives.

Preventive strategies against weight gain and obesity

A well-resourced, comprehensive, population-based set of strategies is needed to
attenuate and eventually reverse the current trends of increasing obesity prevalence
now apparent in most countries. The Epidemiological Triad (host, vector,
environment) has proven to be a robust model for other epidemics and is applied
to obesity. Host-based strategies are primarily educational and these tend to
be most effective among people with higher incomes and higher educational
attainment. The main vectors for a high-energy intake are energy-dense foods and
drinks and large portion sizes and, for low energy expenditure, machines that
promote physical inactivity. Vector-based strategies that alter food formulation
can have a significant impact, particularly through influencing common, highvolume
foods. The increasingly ‘obesogenic’ environments are probably the main
driving forces for the obesity epidemic. There are many environmental strategies
that can influence the physical, economic, policy or socio-cultural environments,
but the evidence base for these potentially powerful interventions is small.
Children should be the priority population for interventions, and improving the
general socio-economic conditions for disadvantaged, marginalized or poor population
sectors is also a central strategy for obesity prevention. The key settings
for interventions are schools, homes, neighbourhoods, primary health care services
and communities. The key macroenvironments for interventions are the
transport and infrastructure sector, the media and the food sector.

Managing as carers of stroke survivors : strategies from the field

Family members are required to provide increasingly complex care to relatives in the home. Stroke is a major cause of disability and there is increasing pressure being placed on carers to provide on-going support to stroke survivors living in the community. This study involved interviewing carers to determine their perspectives on the support and educational needs they require and the coping strategies they used. Data analysis revealed that carers experienced considerable uncertainty about their role as carers and their future and that they used a number of coping strategies to manage in their caring role. The coping strategies adopted by the carers included remaining positive, adapting to change, comparing their situation with others who were worse off, changing their employment status, humour, switching off and using family support. It is important for health care professionals to understand the complex role of the carers and to advise them on strategies they can use to assist managing this role.

A longitudinal study of body image and strategies to lose weight and increase muscles in children

A longitudinal study was used to examine age differences in the role of body mass index (BMI) and sociocultural pressures in predicting changes in body image and strategies to both lose weight and increase muscles among 443 children aged between 8 and 12 years (207 boys, 236 girls) over a 16-month period. The strongest predictors of body image and these strategies were BMI, the media and mothers, and to a lesser extent fathers and best friends. Girls were focused on losing weight, whereas boys were focused on both increasing muscle and losing weight. Surprisingly, there was a reduction in strategies both to lose weight and increase muscles as children approached adolescence. The implications of these findings for preventative educational programs for boys and girls are discussed.